Oil, Israel, Iran, America and the high cost of a
single war-like remark
by Dave Lindorff
07-06-08
One remark by a minor Israeli cabinet officer hinting at a possible US or
Israeli attack on Iran has sent oil prices up by a record $ 11/barrel to a
record $ 139 per barrel. That should tell us what would happen if the Bush
administration were crazy enough to attack Iran, or to let its vassal state
of Israel do it.
Most analysts say an actual attack on Iran would send oil almost immediately
to past $ 300 per barrel -- a level that would strangle economies worldwide
and send the world into an economic collapse not since the Smoot-Hawley
Tariffs kicked off the Great Depression.
The repercussions of that would be staggering. America, which runs on oil,
would grind to a halt. Gasoline and home heating oil would double or triple
in price, leading to desperation in the coming winter for those living north
of the Mason-Dixon line, and to a mass exodus of the elderly from Florida
and Arizona, where air-conditioning would no longer be affordable.
In China, an economy almost wholly dependent upon the manufacture of goods
for sale to American consumers, hundreds of millions of workers would
suddenly find themselves unemployed. With their remittances to their peasant
relatives halted, half the country would be kicked back to the
pre-capitalist era, only without guaranteed wages, homes, food and
healthcare. It is likely that unrest unprecedented since the Cultural
Revolution would erupt.
The Middle East would explode. In Iraq, Shia fighters would rise up in
solidarity with their Shia neighbour, Iran, and begin attacking American
forces in Iraq in earnest, probably making the Tet Offensive in 1968 Vietnam
look like a picnic. Where the US had half a million troops in Vietnam in
that offensive, the military is already stretched to the breaking point in
Iraq, with supply lines barely defended.
It makes you wonder what is going on in the higher reaches of the US
bureaucracy. Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who has in the past intimated
that he’s no fan of war with Iran, just sacked the two top men in the
Airforce -- the most gung-ho of the service branches in terms of Iran war
mongering.
The unprecedent surprise firing of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne and the
Air Force’s top officer, Gen. T. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, was officially
blamed on their poor handling of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal, in
the wake of last year’s unauthorized and improper removal from storage and
cross-country aerial transfer of six nuclear-armed cruise missiles in launch
position on a B-52 Stratofortress, and the discovery this year of an earlier
“inadvertent” shipment of ICBM missile warhead nuclear triggers to Taiwan.
While it is possible that those two incidents were the cause of the firings,
there remain serious unanswered questions about both incidents, and
particularly about the cruise missile flight.
As I reported earlier, there were a half dozen unexplained deaths of US
airmen, including two suicides, which occurred just before and after that
flight last August 30, none of which were investigated at least publicly by
the Pentagon or the FBI according to local prosecutors and medical examiners
contacted. A number of experts in nuclear weapons handling have said that it
would be “impossible” for the six warheads to have been removed from guarded
bunkers at Minot AFB in North Dakota, mounted on cruise missiles, loaded
onto launch pylons under the wing of a B-52, and flown to Barksdale AFB in
Louisiana, all as a “mistake.”
This leads inexorably to the question: What was being planned for those
warheads, if they were not being removed from storage by mistake, and if
they were being moved without the knowledge of the top brass, including
Gates, at the Pentagon? Recall that the only reason anyone learned about the
incident was that it was reported outside the military chain of command to a
reporter at Military Times newspaper by several Air Force whistle-blowers
upset by what they were seeing.
We already witnessed the sudden resignation from the post of CentCom Command
of Adm. William Fallon, whose outspoken opposition to the Bush/Cheney
administration’s talk of attacking Iran led to his being pushed aside in
favour of the more pliant Gen. David Petraeus. Fallon was pushed out by Iran
war hawks because of his opposition to an attack. Were the Air Force
Secretary and Chief of Staff forced out by Gates because of their pro-attack
position?
Plenty to ponder here, but the concerns of oil speculators, who have driven
up the price of oil by 8.6 % (and the stock market down by 3.2 %) in a
single day, in large part on war rumours, should have us all concerned.
It’s not just about the price of gasoline.
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
Source: www.opednews.com |